How to Tell TPP Is a Bad Deal

01/05/2016 09:33 am ETUpdated
Dec 06, 2017

Dozens of Malaysian protesters shout slogans during a demonstration against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA), which they claim will hurt the Malaysian people, as the 27th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit takes place in Kuala Lumpur on November 21, 2015. Malaysia is among signatories to the 12-country, US-sponsored Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. The twelve countries recently agreed to US President Barack Obama's Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact, and the US pledged to boost security assistance to its ally the Philippines, which is in a confrontation with China over maritime territory. AFP PHOTO / ADEK BERRY (Photo credit should read ADEK BERRY/AFP/Getty Images)

How do you tell if the 12-country Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) is a good deal or a bad one?

Consider the recent climate summit agreement in Paris. Nearly 200 countries negotiated the deal, more or less in public for the world to see.

All signatory countries wanted a sustainable planet where their citizens could prosper.

The climate change deal in Paris is not air-tight. Still, it is a significant political, social and moral commitment by leaders of most countries in the world to do better.

Labor and environment show how power relationships work in trade deals.

Going back to NAFTA, the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) enforces labor and environmental provisions in trade deals. The U.S.-Peru trade agreement was a high point in language for environmental protections. However, the World Bank estimates that 80% of logging in Peru is Illegal. The USTR has never enforced environmental protections in Peru or anywhere else.

What about labor? First, what ARE the labor protections? No child labor, no forced labor, the right to form unions, no discrimination for religion, race, country of birth. By modern standards, we take these basic human rights for granted. Didn't we win these fights generations ago?

And if Vietnam, or any of the other countries in this trade agreement don't meet these requirements, they'll face meaningful consequences. ... If you're a country that wants in to this agreement, you have to meet higher standards. If you don't, you're out. If you break the rules, there are actual repercussions.

Two weeks after the Senate vote, shocking press reports from Malaysia described mass graves, bodies showing signs of torture and 28 camps where refugees were held in pens for human trafficking. This was the second large-scale discovery of mass graves on the Thai-Malaysia border that month. More reports followed.

The USTR and Obama administration could have put meaning into the President's lofty promise at Nike. They could have said, "Malaysia is out of TPP. When Malaysia deals effectively with human trafficking, they can dock into TPP like any other country."

Instead, on July 27, the official U.S. government upgraded its ranking of Malaysia regarding human trafficking, without explanation or justification. Presto! Malaysia is qualified to stay in the TPP.

President Obama's eloquence at Nike will be cold comfort to Rohingya refugees in Malaysia and Thailand who are sold from one human trafficker to another. Similar glowing promises for labor standards, going back to Gerald Ford, are lost on the families of murdered labor leaders in Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru.

As we take on climate change and income inequality as global issues, we see that TPP is worse than a step in the wrong direction. TPP locks in toxic power relationships that will block positive change for a generation or two.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said we should start over with a new paradigm for trade policy. She and many others would support a deal that does as much for workers and the environment as it does for global investors. That's exactly what we should do.